Crime

Did You Know Vermont Uses A 'Chastity Belt'?

Do you know what a "sexual relationship" is? Are you sure? Because a state supreme court just had a hell of a time figuring it out.

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What the hell? How is this possible? And why did the Supreme Court of Vermont just issue a detailed and, at turns, ludicrous opinion on it?

Thankfully, Vermont’s Chastity Belt not the physical torture device ripped from tales of yore, but it’s no less degrading a contrivance. A man on probation in the wilds of Vermont managed to rack up a couple of violations and earned a new provision to his sentence known as “Condition 45.” The Supreme Court of Vermont Law Blog has the tale:

Defendant was convicted of several felony and misdemeanor offenses and, after two separate probation violations, he had his conditions regarding sexual relationships tightened. Condition 45 (a.k.a. the “chastity belt” condition) states:

You must inform your [probation officer] of the name and contact information of any person with whom you are planning to have a date or with whom you are planning to begin a dating, sexual or romantic relationship, prior to the date or beginning of the relationship.

Well one probationer, John Galanes, was caught with his pants down (heh) when law enforcement found out he’d managed to get laid without pre-clearance from his probation officer. And yes, the man has a prior history of domestic assault, but making him ask “mother may I?” before every future hookup seems afield of the law’s proper role. At a certain point the panopticon stretches too far and cannot micromanage basic human compulsions based solely on the fear that they could evolve into the sort of relationships that could one day, possibly, result in criminal activity. Even the Precogs in Minority Report let people get their rocks off before sending in Tom Cruise.

How did they find out about his dalliance? They strapped him to a polygraph! They use polygraphs for this sort of thing? What a tremendous waste of time, energy, and resources. I guess there’s no expense to be spared to subject someone in the system to one more indignity.

In any event, it turns out Galanes was giving the maid the ole feather duster:

Before your dirty minds wander too far, the maid “testified that there was no planning on the part of either her or defendant,” and the trial court acknowledged that point but stated “all of the circumstances surrounding it [the most recent encounter]… strengthens the evidence that [this is] the kind of thing that [defendant] should have anticipated happening” because the two had bumped uglies prior to Condition 45’s enactment.

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Now you might expect this sort of provision to go up on appeal because it’s atrocious, but no, instead the Supreme Court of Vermont offered a split decision on the limited question of whether f**king your maid constituted a “sexual or romantic relationship” within the terms of Condition 45.

The Court turns to “sexual relationship” and begins ruminating about what constitutes a “relationship.” Rather than analyzing every Taylor Swift song the SCOV heads over to the boring ol’ dictionary. The definition, to the Court, “suggests something more significant than a single encounter.” The State relies on a law review article about what “sexual relationship” means “in the context of domestic violence laws” (how romantic of them). The law review author’s conclusion is that “key interpretive questions [about what constitutes a “sexual relationship”]… have no clear answer,” which provides a stale answer to Haddaway’s ubiquitous song What is Love?

Of course there’s a law review article defining “sexual relationship.” Specifically this one, “A Sexual Relationship, Did We Have One?” which takes 23 pages to confirm every awful thing that people think about lawyers as nitpicking tools. A position that the dissent picks up when it basically rolls its eyes and groans at the suggestion that a booty call wasn’t precisely what Condition 45 was crafted to prevent. That said, the dissent believes that the “relationship” of a guy and a maid who screwed a couple of times over the course of a few years could “reasonably be called an intimate or ’emotional connection,’” which is adorable.

Perhaps that’s why the dissent couldn’t carry the day. Per the state of Vermont’s highest court:

Viewed as a whole, the condition does not appear to apply to a chance sexual encounter. As we discuss above, the term “sexual relationship” seemingly requires an association of greater duration and multiple sexual encounters. This reading of the term is reinforced by the placing of the term “sexual relationship” alongside other relationships—dating or romantic—that typically involve longer associations, as well as by the additional requirement that the activity, when planned, be subject to notice and approval from the probation officer.

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The moral of the story is, at least in Vermont, a Tinder hookup isn’t a sexual relationship. They should put that on their advertising or something.

Read the full decision on the next page.

A Probationer Doesn’t Kiss and Tell [SCOV Law]

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